Book #79

The Sea of Trolls
by Nancy Farmer

I picked this one up at Powell's because I liked The House of the Scorpion, which I read earlier this year, and when I went to look for other books by the same author, I found one about trolls. And Vikings. How could you go wrong with that?

You can't. This is a good book, a nice little action/adventure with quite a lot of brain behind the brawn. It tells the story of a young Saxon lad, Jack, who is tapped to become an apprentice Bard, meaning he will learn to use magic, in addition to music and the recital of great epics. Farmer placed the book squarely into a specific historical era, which worked very well -- especially since she included fantastic elements such as magic and trolls, and so it felt like these things had the same historical accuracy as the Vikings. The bard that teaches Jack is actually the one who wrote the song of Beowulf, as he himself was there in Hrothgar's hall at the time of those events. That was cool.

Before Jack can finish his training, however, he and his little sister are kidnapped by Vikings, and carried off to Scandinavia to be made into thralls. Farmer did a great job with Jack and his family, because his family is largely obnoxious -- his father is constantly critical and complains about everything, and his sister is utterly and completely spoiled -- and at the beginning of the book, Jack can't stand them, and neither can the reader. But then Jack has a revelation, thanks to his training in the bardic arts, and he sees them in a new light -- and Farmer manages to make it stick. The family is much less annoying after that, even Lucy, the spoiled little girl, despite the fact that Lucy doesn't change her behavior. It was impressive.

The main thing, though, is that there's a great adventure story here. Jack and Lucy are brought to Scandinavia and Lucy is given to an evil queen, who is half-troll -- like Grendel's mother -- and beautiful but treacherous, as half-trolls are. One other thing I liked was the idea that trolls themselves are not so bad, even though they are often the enemies of humans; trolls are at least trustworthy. It's the half-trolls you have to watch out for. And this queen is a piece of work. Anyway, events ensue, and Jack has to go on a quest to save his sister. Farmer also managed to weave in a tremendous amount of Norse mythology, primarily the idea of Yggdrasil, the great ash tree that supports all of the worlds; Jack's quest is for Mimir's Well, the well of knowledge, which Odin drank from after sacrificing his eye; the knowledge Odin gained made him king of the gods. Jack has to travel through Jotunheim, the land of the trolls, and on to another world, past the Norns, in order to find the well, and then he has to sacrifice something important to him in order to be allowed to drink from the well.

The book ends extremely well, not overly happy but not sadly, and there's a great twist that explains a large question that runs through the book. It's an excellent story, by a very good writer; if there was any flaw, it was simply that it might be a tad too young for me. But only a tad.